Friday, 26 August 2016

One thing you expect from an organisation called the North Wales Economic Ambition Board is, er, ambition for North Wales.

The board consists of all six local councils, the North Wales Business Council and four higher and further education institutes.

Its latest publication - A Growth Vision for the Economy of North Wales - talks of "Team North Wales" building a "single, joined-up vision for economic and employment growth for North Wales".

In truth, it's a shallow re-hash of ideas that see the North Wales economy begging for crumbs from to the "Northern Powerhouse" table.

It concentrates on existing strengths and expertise along the A55/A483 corridor but has nothing to say about the economy of the rural hinterland and how we can develop an economy that reflects our geography rather than seek to move people to jobs.

It talks in bland marketing-speak. In imagining Wales in 2035 it states "the economic advantages of being positioned between major economic centres such as Manchester and Dublin will be maximised". How? North Wales is a transit zone for trade and exports between those two cities and it's difficult to see how that will change.

The thrust is, in fact, largely about improving cross-border transport links with details of spending on improving the A55 and electrifying the north Wales rail line taking up the lion's share of the £1.6 bn spend listed under transport.

This dovetails neatly with the board's cross-border focus, which talks of "decisive and co-operative joint planning with Regional Partnerships such as Cheshire and Warrington". Why Warrington would want to plan anything with North Wales when it has Manchester and Liverpool in closer proximity is a mystery, unless it's to provide a commuting workforce that has good transport access to relatively cheap housing in a beautiful location.

True, there are aspects to commend - the focus on improving high-skilled jobs, retaining workers and developing specialist hubs by building on existing centres of excellence in terms of workplaces and colleges/universities. North Wales has got a lot going for it and we should be rightly proud of that.

However, there is precious little ambition on display if there are more references to Warrington in a vision than Bala or Blaenau or Denbigh or Flint.

It also misses several tricks to promote some of our other unique strengths:

• Nothing to suggest that promoting micro-businesses and encouraging entrepreneurship among local people can be a way forward
• No pathway or support for existing small local businesses to grow, a la Moneypenny or Ifor Williams Trailers, into medium-sized companies as outlined by Prof Karel Williams in this report. These medium-sized companies that grow organically, the Mittelstand, are the basis of Germany's strong and resilient economic model.
• No mention of social enterprises or cooperatives, despite the long tradition in rural Wales of such organisations and the more recent growth in the North, which has a plethora of community coop pubs, village shops, leisure centres, breweries and even a professional football club.
• No mention of our unique and respected food and drink industry and how that could be the basis for greater manufacturing output
• No mention of tourism, allegedly the largest employer in Wales. North Wales has been over-reliant on seasonal, low-paid tourist employment for too long which has skewed the economy. There is an opportunity, through adventure tourism that is year-round and involves higher spend, to create a more balanced economy in the hands of local people who will keep the money in the local economy rather than see it seep out.
• No vision for ensuring the rural economy can thrive by focussing on sustainable agriculture, small businesses and innovation rather than over-reliance on building new nuclear power plants and empty industrial units.
• No strategy or targets for local councils, health boards and other public bodies to ensure a greater proportion of the Welsh pound is retained within the region by a more progressive procurement policy or by better collaboration with local firms.
• No mention of renewing or transforming struggling town centres - from Holyhead to Wrexham traditional shopping centres are struggling under the combined pressures of online shopping, out-of-town retail parks and high rent and rates. Retail is an important part of the local economy and thriving towns are essential to economic success but they do not rate a mention.

Renewable energy gets a mention - as well it should given the potential for North Wales to continue to be a net exporter of electricity. But, while both Wylfa Newydd and Trawfynydd are touted for nuclear plants there's no mention of the more realistic and safer option of tidal lagoons and other clean energy options.

It's a report that looks as if it's been written in the 1970s in its desire to see people travel great distances to work. It ignores the growing cost of commuting, growing job insecurity and instability, the almost daily snarl-ups on the A55 and A483 and the desire of many to improve their work-life balance - all mitigate against long commutes. The wider environment, which should be central to any sustainable economic vision, doesn't get a look in.

Any transport "vision" that fails to mention buses is largely redundant in North Wales and integrated transport talks vaguely of "a regional passenger transport network that fully integrates transport modes". One has to ask, given the general thrust of the document, which region?

"Team North Wales" as a concept is laudable - we need a clear vision to deliver a stronger economy here in the North. But one that is fixated with chasing after the "Northern Powerhouse", when that increasingly looks to be moving further away from this area, is doomed to failure.

North Wales needs ambition to improve its economy and communities. Sadly this board seems devoid of ambition.

Monday, 22 August 2016

The Welsh Government has today decided to list the old Groves School building in Wrexham town centre.In a letter sent out today, the relevant minister Ken Skates said:

"I am writing to inform you that I have agreed a decision concerning the possible listing of the
former Grove Park School, Wrexham as a building of special architectural or historic
interest.On the balance of the evidence presented to me, considering the merits of listing the
building against the published criteria and in light of all the representations and all of the
advice that has been submitted, I have agreed to the listing for the building’s special
architectural interest as a building of definite quality and character as a key example of an
interwar girl’s grammar school in the neo-classical tradition (in a 1930s interpretation)
surviving largely intact.I have carefully considered afresh all of the representations made about the building, the
written and visual evidence and all of the specialist advice including the peer review and the
advice that Wrexham County Borough Council commissioned. In particular, I have had
specific regard to the listing criteria contained within Circulars 61/96 and 1/98. I have noted
that there are arguments on both sides of the case which I consider demonstrates the finely
balanced nature of the decision.This decision has immediate effect and introduces a requirement for listed building consent
to demolish the building or alter, or extend it in a way which affects it character as one of
special architectural or historic interest.My officials have today written to Wrexham County Borough Council informing them of my
decision."

The decision comes after a long campaign by Save our Heritage, a pressure group formed to stop Wrexham Council bulldozing the site. The school building and the rest of the site can now be used for the purpose for which it was covenanted to the council - as an educational site. The building can be adapted as a new primary school, which is desperately needed in the town as demand grows.The council's own plans for the town centre show that it wants more housing. But without schools available locally, it's unlikely those houses would be attractive to young families.The challenge now is for the council to deliver on its promise of building new schools on the site.

Saturday, 20 August 2016

This is a talk given by Wales's finest historian John Davies in Mold in 2007. It deserved a wider audience, not least for those who believe the north-east of Wales is no more than an adjunct to Liverpool. Sadly John Bwlchllan died last year but his work lives on.The north-east in the history of WalesJohn Davies

My theme is the role that the inhabitants of the north-east –
essentially the old counties of Flintshire and Denbighshire, or the
one-time county of Clwyd – have played in the history of Wales. There is a tendency – in the south in particular, but also perhaps in
the north-west – to consider the north-east to be a rather detached part of
Wales, or, indeed, to be more of an adjunct of Merseyside than an integral
part of the Welsh nation.

Evidence of the marginalization of the region is apparent from the fact that
it did not become location of one of the founding constituent colleges of the
University of Wales. Nor did it obtain the northern headquarters of the BBC
in Wales, despite the fact that the number of inhabitants in the two original
north-eastern counties exceeds that of the three original north-western
counties by over a hundred thousand. It has no city, no out-station of the
National Museum, and, as yet, no World Heritage Site. The region has not
had its share of Welsh institutions, not because it is an unsuitable place in
which to locate such institutions, but because we in the rest of Wales have
connived in the region’s marginalization. And I speak as one from the rest of
Wales, for in my advocacy of the north-east, I am inspired, not by any
personal or family associations with the region, but by a feeling that that
marginalization is fundamentally unjust.
My essential argument is that, rather than being an adjunct of the rest of
Wales, the rest of Wales is in fact an adjunct of the north-east. To sustain
my argument, I hope to show that the majority of the significant events in
the history of Wales took place in the one-time county of Clwyd. If we go
back to the very beginnings, we find that the first evidence of the existence
of human beings in Wales comes from the Pontnewydd Cave in the Elwy
Valley, west of St Asaph. It is a human tooth which is 250,000 years old,
and was, as the journal Antiquity put it, in the ‘mouth of the first
Welshman’. A neighbouring cave, that of Ffynnon Beuno, yielded Wales’s
best artefact from the Palaeolithic Age and also the bones of prehistoric
animals which Darwin studied while he was developing his theory of
evolution.
During the Neolithic Age, when the emphasis seems to have be upon the
seafarers following the western sea routes, it would be reasonable to expect
that the north-east was not in the forefront. Yet Y Gop at Trelawnyd is the
most astonishing monument of Neolithic Wales – a mound hardly less in size
than the superb monuments of the same period at Newgrange in Ireland. The Bronze Age – the period extending from about 2,400 to 600 BC – the
central role of the north-east is even more apparent. Flintshire yielded by far
the most astonishing Bronze Age artefact found in Britain – the elaborate
ceremonial cape which came to light in Mold in 1833. And may I say that we
in Wales have as good a right to see the cape repatriated to Wales from the
British Museum as have the Greeks to demand the return of the Elgin
Marbles.

By the opening of the last pre-Christian millennium, the north-east – and
one could include in the term the county of Montgomery – was an area of
intense activity. The earliest ramparts of the great hill-fort at Dinorben date
from 1000 BC, making them broadly contemporaneous with the first
Temple in Jerusalem. Although it has been much undermined by
quarrying, Dinorben is still astonishing, and what is even more astonishing
is that it is only one of the north-east’s supendous group of hill-forts.
Dinorben, Penycorddyn Mawr, Llanymynech, Breiddin, Ffridd Faldwyn and
the rest are among the most spectacular monuments of British prehistory.
Hardly anything on that scale was built anywhere else in Wales. Some of
the forts contain the foundations of considerable groups of houses
indicating that this part of Wales, in the last centuries of prehistory, was
capable of sustaining quasi-urban communities. Some of the earliest
evidence of links between Wales and the Celtic civilization coming into
existence in central Europe has come from the north-east. As the Hallstatt
culture developed into that known as La Tène, the north-east is again
represented, with the hanging bowl from Cerrigydrudion and the fire dogs
from Capel Garmon.
So far, I have been considering prehistory, the era before the availablity of
written records; with the availability of such records, we are, of course,
ushered into the historical era. It is in the north-east that the historical era in
Wales begins. The first written evidence of any area of Wales is Tacitus’s
1st-century account of the Roman attack upon the Deceangli, the people
living between the Dee and the Clwyd. The huge military camp discovered
at Rhyn Park near the mouth of the Ceiriog Valley indicates the scale of the
Roman preparations and the degree of resistance they expected. Tacitus’s
account, however, suggests that the Deceangli accepted Roman rule
peacefully. Part of the appeal of the area to the Romans was its lead
deposits, deposits that had long been exploited in prehistory and which
would loom large in the history of the north-east almost until the 20th century.

Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, the main focus of the history
of Wales is concerned with the growth of the Christian church and the
state-building activities of the Welsh rulers. Among the most important
indications of the growth of the Christian church are the inscribed stones of
the 5th to 8th centuries, and the most varied group of such stones comes
from the western part of the old Denbighshire, the area around Penmachno.
The most important monument to state-building in early Christian Wales is
the Eliseg Pillar near Llangollen, which celebrates the achievements of the
royal house of Powys. Equally indicative of the achievments of that house is
Offa’s Dyke, which can be seen at its best in the north-east. That Offa, king
of Mercia, felt the need to demarcate the border between his kingdom and
that of Powys, surely indicates that the early Powys had attained a
substantial amount of territorial coherence.
The historical record increases markedly from the 12th century onwards. By
then it is evident that the north-east belonged to two distinct polities. Its
southern part - the cantrefi and commotes of Maelor, Iâl, Nanheudwy,
Cynllaith and Edeirnion – were part of Powys, while the northern and
western part – the Perfeddwlad, that is the four cantrefi of Tegeingl, Dyffryn
Clwyd, Rhos and Rhufoniog – were considered by the rulers of Gwynedd to
constitute the eastern part of their territories, a part that they knew as
Gwynedd Is Conwy.
In the late 12th century, Powys split into two, and Maelor, Iâl, Nanheudwy,
Cynllaith and Edeirnion came to constitute Powys Fadog. It was these two
constituent parts of the north-east – the Perfeddwlad and Powys Fadog –
which provided the stage for the major drama of 13th Century Wales, the
attempt of the rulers of Gwynedd to gain hegemony over the rulers of the
rest of Wales. The success of that attempt ebbed and flowed, and the
measuring rod of success and failure always depended upon who ruled the
Perfeddwlad. When it was ruled by Gwynedd, the cause of the two
Llywelyns was in the ascendant; when it was ruled by the kings of England,
that cause was in jeopardy. And of course, when the final loss of the
Perfeddwlad came about in 1277, that prepared the way for the last chapter
in the history of the Welsh principality, a chapter which – with the attack
upon Hawarden and the proclamation of the Statute of Rhuddlan – had the
north-east as its main stage.
The Edwardian conquest endowed Wales with its most distinguished
buildings, the Edwardian castles – the “magnificent badges of our

servitude”, to quote the comment of that distinguished native of
Flintshire,Thomas Pennant. When we think of the castles, we tend to think
of the north-west, of Caernarfon, Conwy, Harlech and Beaumaris. Yet, it
should be borne in mind that the talented architect of those splendid
castles, James of St George, had honed his skills in the north-east, in his
work on the castles of Flint and Rhuddlan. Furthermore, the most ingenious
example of medieval defensive architecture in Wales, and very possibly in
Europe – the triple octagonal tower gate at Denbigh – is very much one of
the treasures of the north-east.

The next great crisis in the history of Wales – the Rising of Owain Glyndwˆ r
– is again very much a north-eastern affair. Glyndwˆ r was quintessentially a
figure of the north-eastern March; he represented the senior line of the
lords of Powys Fadog, and lived at Sycharth, Llansilin, a mere stone’s throw
from the English border. Many of the major events of the Rising – the
quarrel with Grey of Ruthin, the proclamation of Owain as prince in
Glyndyfyrdwy, the attacks on the north-eastern towns and the burning of
Sycharth – were events in the north-east. The north-east was also the
setting for that crisis in the history of the English monarchy which in part
led to the Rising – the capture of Richard II at Flint Castle and his
eventual murder.
While central to the story of war and rebellion, the north-east was also
central to more peaceful and cultural pursuits. That was in part the
consequence of the fact that, from the late 15th to the late 18th
century, the north-east was unquestionably the most prosperous part of
Wales. It has a higher proportion of land of high fertility than any other
part of Wales. It played a central part in the rise of the woollen industry;
of the 62 fulling mills built in Wales between 1400 and 1500, the
majority were built in Flintshite and what would be Denbighshire. The
continuing exploitation of the leadmines of Tegeingl and Maelor was also
important, as were the incipient industries of the north-eastern coalfield.
The most evident fruit of this prosperity is architectural. The north-east
has the wonderful shrine at Holywell and the splendid late medieval
churches of St Giles, Wrexham, St Eurgain, Northop, and above all All
Saints, Gresford, by far the finest parish church in Wales. But the north-
east’s true architectural richness comes from its large number of
humbler buildings – the many two-aisled churches of the Vale of Clwyd,
for example, and the gentry and yeomen’s houses of the countryside
and the sparkling black-and-white buildings of Ruthin.

Less immediately evident, but perhaps more significant, was the role of the
north-east in the history of the Welsh literature of the late medieval period.
Saunders Lewis liked to describe that as “Canrif Fawr Llenyddiaeth
Gymraeg” (the Great Century of Welsh Literature) and indeed the roll call of
the distinguished poets of the era gives credence to his description. That
roll call would include Tudur Aled, Guto’r Glyn, Gutun Owain, Iolo Goch,
Dafydd ab Edmwnd and Lewys Glyn Cothi. Of the poets listed, all, with the
exception of Lewys Glyn Cothi, were natives of the north-east and
depended upon the gentry of that region – Hywel ap Dafydd of Northop, for
example – for the patronage which sustained them.
Not content with being central to the flowering of late medieval Welsh
culture, the north-east was even more central to the next cultural phase –
the Renaissance. Indeed, the Renaissance in Wales is essentially an
episode in the history of the counties of Denbigh and Flint. The architectural
pre-eminence evident in late 15th and early 16th Century Holywell and
Gresford is even more evident in late 16th and early 17th Century
Bachegraig, Plas Clough and Plas Teg. Of the Welshmen of distinction in
that era, the greatest humanist, William Salesbury, was a native of
Llansannan, the greatest benefactor, William Morgan, of Penmachno, the
greatest scholar, John Davies of Mallwyd, of Llanferres, the leading
financier, Richard Clough, of Denbigh, and the most dedicated gardener,
Thomas Hanmer, of Bettisfield. It has been argued that the factor which
above all distinguishes Welsh-language culture from the cultures associated
with other Celtic languages is the readiness of some in Wales to embrace
Renaissance ideas; without the north-east, Wales would not have been
endowed with that benefit.
The pre-eminence of the north-east remained apparent in the mid and late
17th century. In that era, Wrexham was almost certainly the largest town in
Wales, and its role as a centre of progressive thinking was evident during
the Civil War years. The most gifted of the gentry families of those years
was the Myddelton family of Chirk, and the most successful land
accumulators of the era was the Watkin Wynn family of Wynnstay, near
Ruabon, who, by the mid 18th century, had made Wynnstay the centre of
by far the largest landed estate in Wales.
In the late 18th century, Wales’s leading naturalist and historian was
Thomas Pennant of Plas Downing, near Mostyn, author of Tours in Wales,
the first volume of which appeared in 1778. The title of the work would suggest Wales as a whole, but it is evident that he
considered that the only region deserving of extended treatment was the
north-east. It was his work that convinced leading figures in England that
Wales was intellectually interesting, thus initiating the stream of
penpushing English tourists who visited into Wales from the 1780s
onwards. That tradition reached its climax with George Borrow, whose
main interest was the north-east and who spent the first half of his Welsh
visit at Llangollen.

An indication of what was considered interesting in Wales comes from the
piece of doggerel entitled ‘the Seven Wonders of Wales’, which was
probably written in the 1790s:
Pistyll Rhaeadr and Wrexham steeple,
Snowdon’s mountain without its people,
Overton’s yew trees, St Winifred’s wells,
Llangollen’s bridge and Gresford’s bells.
Of the seven, Snowdon, at the time, was in Caernarfonshire and Pistyll
Rhaeadr was shared between Denbighshire and Montgomeryshire;
Wrexham’s steeple, Llangollen’s bridge and Gresford’s bells were in
Denbighshire, while Overton’s yews and Winifred’s wells were in Flintshire.
Thus, Wales’s tourist attractions were being interpreted almost exclusively
in terms of the north-east.
This was partly the consequence of the fact that the north-east was the
first part of Wales to have turnpike roads linking the region to the road
network of the kingdom as a whole. The first act authorising a turnpike
road in Wales was that of 1752, and concerned the linking of Ellesmere in
Shropshire with Overton in Flintshire and Wrexham in Denbighshire. A
further twenty Wales-related acts were passed in the following fifteen
years, half of which involved the north-east. It may have been the
breaking down of isolation caused by roadbuilding which caused the
north-east to be, in the late 18th Century, the most politically aware part
of Wales. Petitions in favour of parliamentary reform came
disproportionately from Denbighshire and Flintshire. Those counties were
also at the forefront of agricultural improvement in late 18th century
Wales, with the innovations of the Watkin Wynns of Wynnstay and the
insistence of Philip Yorke of Erddig that ‘every field of my estate will be
kept to the culture I shall dictate’.

The pre-eminence in Welsh culture enjoyed by the north-east in the late
medieval and the Renaissance eras was equally apparent in later periods.
The movement which eventually gave rise to the National Eisteddfod had its
roots in the north-east, where there was a proud memory of the 16th
Century eisteddfodau at Caerwys. If theatre in Wales has its roots in the
Interlude, then the north-east is the birthplace of Welsh drama. (Perhaps the
later efforts of Lord Howard de Walden at Chirk and of R. O. F. Wynne at
Garthewin are echoes of those earlier endeavours.)
In the 19th century, the novel in Welsh first reached a distinguished level
with the writings of Daniel Owen of Mold and again, perhaps, the later
writings of Islwyn Ffowc Elis of Wrexham and the Ceiriog Valley are echoes
of that early endeavour. Among the first permanent schools to be
established in Wales was that of Gabriel Goodman at Ruthin, the beginning
of educational innovation which perhaps had its echoes in the 20th Century
in Flintshire’s pioneering role in the field of Welsh-medium education. It
would be tedious to recount the number of times one has had to disagree
with the statement that Rhydfelen in Glamorgan was the first Welsh-
medium secondary school in the world. Rhydfelen was opened in 1962, six
years after the opening of Glan Clwyd in Flintshire.
But if it is evident that the north-east, time and time again, has made a
wholly disproportionate contribution to the history and culture of Wales,
why does the region now seem to have been marginalised? Some would
maintain that that is the result of the Industrial Revolution which caused the
south-east to become far and away the most populous part of Wales. Yet it
could be argued that the industrialization of the north-east was both earlier
and more fundamental than the industrialization of the south-east.
The great innovation in heavy industry in the 18th Century – the smelting of iron
with coke rather than charcoal – was adopted in Bersham in 1721, decades
before such an innovation was adopted in Merthyr. I mentioned that the north-
east has no out-station of the National Museum. Bersham, with its fascinating
evidence of its industrial past, would make an admirable National Museum of
iron-making. Merthyr and other southern centres produced iron in bulk, but rarely
manufactured objects made from iron. The industry in the north-east was far
more sophisticated. There, objects were made from iron, in particular virtually all
the cylinders used in Watt’s steam engines. Furthermore, iron from the south-
eastern works was not used to create ironwork masterpieces such as those
produced by the Davies family of Esclusham, masterpieces that can still be seen in Chirk, Leeswood and Wrexham. Industrial development in the north-east was
far more varied and innovative, extending from metalwork to chemicals, from
textiles to pottery, and from paper to shipbuilding. In 1774, Dr Johnson counted
nineteen different works within two miles of St Winifred’s Well in Holywell. By
today, Greenfield, below Holywell, is a veritable open-air museum of industrial
archaeology. In 1801, some 30,000 people lived in the essentially industrial 25-mile belt between Holywell and Wrexham. In 1801, hardly half that number lived
in the equivalent industrial belt between Merthyr and Pontypool.

Of course, from the mid 19th century onwards, the astonishing growth of
coalmining in the south-east made that region the heartland of industry in
Wales, and the heartland too of industrial militancy in Wales. Yet it should
be remembered that the first trade-union members in Wales were not in
Merthyr. They were in Bagillt, where a branch of the Friendly Associated
Coalminers’ Union was established in 1830. Much has rightly been made of
the significance of the Merthyr Rising of 1831, but in stressing the
significance of the Merthyr Rising, we have perhaps tended to neglect to
stress the significance of the Mold Riots of 1869.
Furthermore, it could be argued that the growth in coalmining – the key to
the popualtion supremacy of the south-east – is not in itself an advance in
industrialization. Indeed, the distinguished economic historian, John
Williams, argued that mining coal is an extractive industry, just like
agriculture, and therefore raised doubts about whether the south Wales
coalfield was ever industrialized in the fullest sense of the word.
In marked contrast, the north-east was industrialised in the fullest sense of
the word, and its development of a more varied industrial base than that
which developed in the south-east saved it from the worst rigours of the
depression of the 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, in the inter-war years, all the
counties of Wales suffered from a fall in population, with the sole exception
of Flintshire. And, above all, industrialisation in the north-east resulted in the
building of the finest structure to grace the land of Wales. I am referring to
the wonderful Pontcysyllte aqueduct, whose recognition as a World
Heritage site is, I devoutly hope, shortly to be announced.
And there, I had better stop. I began preparing this talk in the belief that
without the north-east, Wales would have been a much poorer place. While
working on the theme, I came to the conclusion that, without the north-
east, Wales, in any meaningful sense, would not exist at all.

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